[WCA Regulations 2014] Mean of N for FMC

[cubizh]

Surely we can add 'Best of 3' again in addition to 'Mean of 3'?

I don't think I've seen this in the thread, but why was 'Best of 3' taken out?

You can see the details here.

 

[ThomasJE]

You can see the details here.

Thanks.

So, instead of having 3 separate time slots that people could use when there are not any other events they are doing, they will force you to turn up to every one of those 3 slots?

If competitions want to make more events available to people, then surely we can have both 'Mean of 3' and 'Best of 3' as formats, and let the organizers decide?

Bearing in mind that Sebastian put that there were no cons to this at all on Github, then for me to find one bearing in mind I have been cubing for a lot shorter than he has and also that almost no discussion and no opinions from the cubing community annoys me.

And just saying, this 'Best of 3'/'Mean of 3' thing also applies to Feet, 6x6 and 7x7.

 

[uberCuber]

So, instead of having 3 separate time slots that people could use when there are not any other events they are doing, they will force you to turn up to every one of those 3 slots?

This is what is annoying about the change. If an organizer wants to have 3 attempts of FMC, now in order to place in the competition, one is required to put three hours of their time into the event, which no other event comes close to requiring.

And this 'Best of 3'/'Mean of 3' thing also applies to Feet, 6x6 and 7x7.

Wait, how are those very relevant? FMC takes a full hour per attempt, whereas those events take a small number of minutes per solve. Wanting to run FMC as best of 3 makes a lot of sense, but why would you ever need to run those three events as best of 3?

 

[ThomasJE]

Wait, how are those very relevant? FMC takes a full hour per attempt, whereas those events take a small number of minutes per solve. Wanting to run FMC as best of 3 makes a lot of sense, but why would you ever need to run those three events as best of 3?

I wasn't complaining about that; I was just saying. I'll edit my post to avoid confusion.

 

[cubizh]

So, instead of having 3 separate time slots that people could use when there are not any other events they are doing, they will force you to turn up to every one of those 3 slots?

If the competition is running the event FMC (Mean of 3), you can still only participate in the attempts you want. No one is forcing you to do all 3. You still get single results, just not a mean and are not going to win the event in this format.

If competitions want to make more events available to people, then surely we can have both 'Mean of 3' and 'Best of 3' as formats, and let the organizers decide?

Bearing in mind that Sebastian put that there were no cons to this at all on Github, then for me to find one bearing in mind I have been cubing for a lot shorter than he has and also that almost no discussion and no opinions from the cubing community annoys me.

And this 'Best of 3'/'Mean of 3' thing also applies to Feet, 6x6 and 7x7.

The reasons to remove that possibility based themselves in looking at the (former) current events in 9b2) which at the time were Rubik's Cube: With Feet, 6x6x6 Cube, and 7x7x7 Cube. For all these three events, a Mean of 3 was already the most used format so, with that basis, it made sense to remove it. However, since a new event was added to this category, my personal view is it might have been more prudent to wait (until the next regulations review) to enforce this, given that no data existed on FMC under 9b2), and would allow for a more peaceful and justified transition for all events, after some time of experience and would reduce this sort of discussion. This regulation also has some other minor consequences that are not meant to be discussed in this thread's scope.

 

[Sebastien]

Wait, how are those very relevant? FMC takes a full hour per attempt, whereas those events take a small number of minutes per solve. Wanting to run FMC as best of 3 makes a lot of sense, but why would you ever need to run those three events as best of 3?

That's exactly why this proposal was completely uncontroversial in the first place, thus no big discussion about it.

I see that adding FMC to 9b2 made it more controversial, but you just can't make everyone happy:

1) If Best of 3 was still allowed for FMC, then you would have a bunch of people complaining about not being able to get a Mean of 3 ranking.
2) Now that Best of 3 is not allowed for FMC, there is a bunch of people complaining that they need to attend all attempts in order to place at the competition.

I consider 1) as worse, because 2) [that's what we have now] still leaves the choice to the competitors to attempt a Mean or not.

Edit: Partly ninja'd.

 

[keemy]

1) If Best of 3 was still allowed for FMC, then you would have a bunch of people complaining about not being able to get a Mean of 3 ranking.

I don't see why allowing best of 3 would not give people the chance to get a mean of 3. All comps that gave people means of 3 (except one) where judged as best of 3.

Also

You are right that a DNF would be harsh if the format is Mean of 3. But that's something that also goes for 6x6x6, 7x7x7 and feet. And it doesn't seem to be a problem there. And as I said before, I think that is far easier to not DNF in FMC than at every other event. As far as you don't do crazy last minute finishes, you can finish your solve in FMC and check your solution multiple times before the attempt ends. This is a benefit that you don't have for any other event.

I also don't think that it is a common thing that "better" FMC competitors hand in a solution which is supposed to work and then doesn't. I haven't had a single DNF like this in my whole cubing career.

I don't really agree with. For FMC maybe I'm not the best but I'd like to think I'm decent and this has happened to me more than once (us nats 2010 I had a 29 that I wrote down wrong and not for lack of trying, I checked my solution ~20 times but still messed up writing it down). For me I have a 33% DNF rate (not counting DNS's which usually just occur because I don't find something worth turning in, these would be those still trying for the best at 50 mins you mentioned so I'm not wont count them) and for 3BLD I have 38% DNFs (again ignoring DNS's also this figure is higher than it should be as a few of my DNFs should have been DNSs). So for me at least I have a similar rate of failure in an event I actually really like (FMC) and an event I dislike (3BLD). So I really don't understand how you think FMC can be easier to not DNF in that EVERY other event when, at least for me, its of similar difficulty as blindfold not to even mentions sighted events...

 

[uberCuber]

1) If Best of 3 was still allowed for FMC, then you would have a bunch of people complaining about not being able to get a Mean of 3 ranking.

Keemy got to this first, but I agree with his point. Right now, there are plenty of results that are listed in the rankings for mean of 3 despite the fact that those competitions were run as best of 3. The fact that running them as mo3 was not an option at the time is irrelevant. They were run as best of 3, and are being ranked as means of 3, so it is obviously perfectly acceptable to you for this to occur, so saying that despite this it is not acceptable for future competitions to do the same thing is just being inconsistent on purpose.

 

[irontwig]

I checked my solution ~20 times but still messed up writing it down

So, you checked it 20 times and it seemed to be correct, or did you see that you had made a mistake, but didn't manage to find where that mistake was? If it's the former I have no idea how managed to do that.

 

[Lucas Garron]

It's a good point that "Mean of 3" forces competitors to do all 3 attempts when "Best of 3" might save valuable time because it can free up competitors more.

This goes counter to the "Both formats take roughly the same resources" which was the rationale for removing Mean of 3 from Best of 3 events *before* the Board voted to change FMC to Mean of 3.

Would someone be willing to update the pros and cons from Sébastien's proposal for tradeoffs among the following possibilities?

• FMC as "Mean of 3".
• FMC as "Best of 3".
• FMC as either "Best of 3" or "Mean of 3" (organizer choice).

In addition, if "Best of 3" is an option, consider the effect of ranking means of competitors who have three successful attempts (like BLD since Jan. 1).

(Note: In all cases, "Best of 1" and "Best of 2" should remain as choices, and all measured means should be means of the same number attempts.)

 

[uberCuber]

FMC as either "Best of 3" or "Mean of 3" (organizer choice).

With this option, do you still mean to rank means of 3 from those comps organized as best of 3? You specify ranking means for best of 3 rounds in the option above it and not this one, but I think that would be the best option of all and it should be added to the list if it's not what you intended in this case. Allow a competition to be organized with either Best of 3 or Mean of 3, but rank means of 3 in the database either way.

 

[Lucas Garron]

With this option, do you still mean to rank means of 3 from those comps organized as best of 3? You specify ranking means for best of 3 rounds in the option above it and not this one, but I think that would be the best option of all and it should be added to the list if it's not what you intended in this case. Allow a competition to be organized with either Best of 3 or Mean of 3, but rank means of 3 in the database either way.

That's a good point. I'll edit my post to make it a separate option from the round formats.

Personally, I think letting organizers chose between Best of 3 or Mean of 3 without a strong default is a bit unfortunate, but I can see the case for doing so for FMC, as well as considering ranking means for Best of 3 rounds. Basically, all rounds would give the same records, but the organizer may chose which way to do the competition ranking. (But personally, I'm still uncomfortable with the organizer making such a choice, and I would probably be against it if it weren't for the "everyone needs to do 3 attempts to rank in Mean of 3" argument.)

 

[Sebastien]

Keemy got to this first, but I agree with his point. Right now, there are plenty of results that are listed in the rankings for mean of 3 despite the fact that those competitions were run as best of 3. The fact that running them as mo3 was not an option at the time is irrelevant. They were run as best of 3, and are being ranked as means of 3, so it is obviously perfectly acceptable to you for this to occur, so saying that despite this it is not acceptable for future competitions to do the same thing is just being inconsistent on purpose.

You surely got a valid point there. What I dislike about this, is that this focusses on the ranking only. But the ranking for Mean of 3 in FMC is just a secondary result of the format being added in order to provide fairer conditions in FMC, especially for major competitions, which is the main point of the whole thing. How would you ensure that Mean of 3 is used as the format at a competition when fairer conditions are needed, i.e. because some title is given away?

 

[uberCuber]

You surely got a valid point there. What I dislike about this, is that this focusses on the ranking only. But the ranking for Mean of 3 in FMC is just a secondary result of the format being added in order to provide fairer conditions in FMC, especially for major competitions, which is the main point of the whole thing. How would you ensure that Mean of 3 is used as the format at a competition when fairer conditions are needed, i.e. because some title is given away?

I'll assume it isn't enough of an answer to you to leave this up to the judgment call of the organizing teams? How about requiring Nationals/Worlds competitions to use mean of 3? Meh, that would achieve your main goal, I think, but it's so unlike anything present in the regs right now. I'll think about this.

EDIT: Just throwing more bad ideas out in case they help someone get a good idea: require mo3 over bo3 for >x competitors (but any number chosen for x would invoke complaints about being arbitrary)

 

[BaMiao]

(But personally, I'm still uncomfortable with the organizer making such a choice, and I would probably be against it if it weren't for the "everyone needs to do 3 attempts to rank in Mean of 3" argument.)

Is there any particular reason you don't want organizers making this choice? To me, it makes most sense, since organizers are the ones who set the schedule, and would know how difficult it would be to get all three attempts in. In some competitions, it might be possible to do all three attempts without sacrificing the ability to compete in other events. In this case, a Mean of 3 would make sense. Other competitions won't have that flexibility, so a "Best of 3" ranking would allow people to podium with only one or two attempts.

 

[keemy]

So, you checked it 20 times and it seemed to be correct, or did you see that you had made a mistake, but didn't manage to find where that mistake was? If it's the former I have no idea how managed to do that.

IIRC it was something like a U written instead of a U', it's really not that hard for it to happen imo but feel free to look down on me for it.

 

[Lucas Garron]

Is there any particular reason you don't want organizers making this choice? To me, it makes most sense, since organizers are the ones who set the schedule, and would know how difficult it would be to get all three attempts in. In some competitions, it might be possible to do all three attempts without sacrificing the ability to compete in other events. In this case, a Mean of 3 would make sense. Other competitions won't have that flexibility, so a "Best of 3" ranking would allow people to podium with only one or two attempts.

Because we have preferred formats and the change from issue #109 for a reason. Given two formats that take the same resources, there should be a consistent one that the competitor should expect to encounter.

To reiterate: In this case, there is a significant argument that the two formats don't take the same resources, but *apart from that* I'm uncomfortable with making this the organizer's choice.

 

[Lucas Garron]

IIRC it was something like a U written instead of a U', it's really not that hard for it to happen imo but feel free to look down on me for it.

I usually test the reverse solution followed by the reverse scramble.
It works as well as turning a piece of text upside-down to count the words (you lose track of the patterns and make fewer mistakes on the specific task at hand).

 

[keemy]

I usually test the reverse solution followed by the reverse scramble.
It works as well as turning a piece of text upside-down to count the words (you lose track of the patterns and make fewer mistakes on the specific task at hand).

Yeah sure, I think I am better at it now (it helped me to stop using rotations so the moves don't feel smooth) but I still think it's ridiculous to say FMC is easier to avoid DNFs in then every other event.

 

[Sebastien]

IIRC it was something like a U written instead of a U', it's really not that hard for it to happen imo but feel free to look down on me for it.

Could you just elaborate on how you use to check your solutions please?

That's how I do that and I'm sure this is the easiest and safest way to make sure your solution is correct:

1. Take a solved cube
2. Apply the scramble
3. Apply the solution
4. If the cube is solved, then your solution works.

I cannot and will not believe that you performed such a check ~20 times with a positive result and that your solution was still wrong.